Large-scale system integration (such as an airplane, space shuttle, space station, ship, submarine, helicopter, power plant, large complex building, aircraft carrier, or the like) is typically a complex undertaking. In this regard, such large-scale systems (sometimes referred to as a “system of systems”) often include a working conglomeration of smaller-scale systems (systems), which themselves often include even smaller-scale systems (subsystems), and so forth. Notwithstanding the necessity of building, retaining, and imparting an overall vision of a large-scale system, it is nevertheless imperative that such a system be defined in detail to the level of the individual constituent components that together bring the over all system to physical being.
The overall design of a large-scale system often includes a wiring design that integrates the transport elements of the smaller-scale subsystems and their components included therein. A transport element can be understood to represent a means for transporting information between systems and/or subsystems, and can comprise, for example, a wire, a tube, a duct, a fiber optic strand or radio frequency, etc. Conventionally, such wiring designs have been developed manually, serially and often with a high rate of change. In the aerospace industry, for example, developing a large-scale system-level wiring design, engineers for the subsystems often select baseline wiring designs that best fit the functionality of the respective subsystem. A wiring integration engineer receives these baseline subsystem designs for aggregation into wire harnesses for integrating the subsystems transport elements within the context of the product being built. As many systems are designed within limited space, the resulting wire harnesses are often designed to include multiple subsystems, as opposed to being dedicated to each subsystem. Each system and subsystem has unique requirements that must be met by the integrated wiring harness designs.
Conventional techniques for developing large-scale system-level wiring harness designs are often very complex, repetitive and based on large numbers of design artifacts such as virtual and hardcopy documents, i.e., schematic diagrams, data tables, instructional text, exploded graphic views, and so forth. In the aerospace industry, for example, developing a set of logical wire harnesses often includes collecting Air Transport Association (ATA) level system schematics or other defined system categorization strategies. Roadmaps of wire harnesses are then manually created within the geometric constraints of an aircraft defining the raceways through which the harnesses can be routed therein. The wiring roadmap must account for all of the production breaks within the aircraft. Next, the roadmaps are manually transformed into wiring diagrams using a Computer-Aided Drawing Design (CADD) system. Wire harness data is then authored based upon the wiring diagram notations and stored in a database that holds each element of the wiring harness design data. In one authoring technique, for example, the wiring diagrams can be integrated via a computing function to generate wire harness data. In another technique, for example, wire harness data can be authored manually via wiring diagram inter-group inputs. In accordance with these techniques, information is shared between designers to permit the designers to collect wire harness delta changes required to define the content of the wire harnesses and enter the data into a wiring database. Manual data synchronization is then performed between the CADD system and the wiring database to ensure the integrity and intent of the design is maintained. The sole source authority to build the wire harness is the wiring database and not the CADD wiring diagram.
To complete the development of an aircraft-level wiring design, an engineering bill of material (BOM) is then generated for each wire harness. The BOM for each wire harness identifies and lists all raw materials, subassemblies, parts, and even the intangibles that may be required to manufacture and install the respective wire harness. Regulatory agencies often require maintaining configuration control of the wire harness throughout its life cycle—from its development through installation in the product and throughout the life of the product. Each wire harness is configured under a unique part number. The authorizations for the designs must also be tracked along with the changes made to a wire harness. For every delta change, the wire harness part number is rolled after the wire harness has been installed in the product to manage configuration control of the wire harness. In other words, the designer must be able to show which change authorization changed what content of the wire harness. In this regard, manual audits can be performed to ensure the design meets customer specifications and requirements.
Whereas techniques for developing large-scale system-level wiring designs such as that described above are adequate, such techniques have drawbacks and require manpower to overcome the process and tool shortcomings. Small changes in a design often require revision to a large percentage of the harnesses and diagrams for every customer. For example, a twenty-percent change in a design can require revision to eighty percent or more of the wire harnesses and diagrams for every customer. In such instances, a wiring design engineer can spend approximately thirty-two percent of their available resources on creating new wiring diagrams, and then consume another fifteen percent of those resources to synchronize the CADD and wiring databases. As a result of re-entry of the same data in multiple computing systems, the error rate in harness designs can be very high. In addition, the wiring design engineer often has to wait to ensure that he/she has received all inputs from subsystem designers (e.g., pin to pin definition of the system functionality) before the engineer can proceed to integrate those systems. And as the engineer is typically never sure that the entire design intent of a system change has been included in the wiring design or redesign, and if any information is missing, that information is typically not discovered until functional testing of the system is performed after the installation into the product.
A high rate of change in re-engineered wire harnesses is non-value added work because of multiple baselines used by the system designers. As a consequence, the high rate of change in wiring configuration often leads to out-of-sequence work and has a very large impact on the downstream customers of wire harnesses, such as manufacturing, fabrication and installation processes and products.